Vorkosigan

Ah...the Odyssey. MacDonald makes the recognition scene into the basis for the annointing scenes prior to the crucifixion. Too bad Mark couldn't work the dog in. I always cry when the dog dies. But Mark would have ruined it:

"But when he knew he heard
Jesus voice nearby, he did his best
to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears,
having no strength to move nearer his Savior.
And Jesus looked away,
wiping a salt tear from cheek; but he
hid this from Peter and the others. Jesus said
"Look, this poor dog knows the Son of Man." But
death and darknes in that instant closed the
eyes of Argos, who had seen the Son of Man,
Jesus, after waiting all his life."

Where the heck have you been hiding, anyway, Dr. Still?

Michael

Pantera

Devnet, that's hilarious. I shall remember that one.

NOGO

The problem here is that we have no way of deciding what should be read literally and what shouln't. We can argue all day and all year on just this topic.

The deaper meanings of Christianity have as much trouble as the walking on water. For example do you believe that the ill and deformed are such because they have sinned? Jesus says just that.
He also said that he was sent only for the children of the house of Israel. Now why is it that preachers never quote Jesus on these subject.

What you seem to say is that we should all look at the elements that YOU think are important and significant and ignore the rest.

The fact that the writers of the Gospels tell us that Jesus walked on water may not be very important whether you actually believe it or not.
But when they contradict themselves on something as important as the resurection then credibility suffers tremendously.

When we are told that Jesus came to save humanity from something that happened in Genesis, one has to ask the following question. Why has Jesus never spoken a single word nor even hinted at the link between the Genesis story and his mission?

Once we get through all these profound issues how much further ahead will Christianity be?

aikido7

I see what you are saying. You are absolutely right. It merely muddies the water for me to try and make a subjective distinction between argument and dialogue.

If that point (foolish though it was) did not come across, then my post was in vain and your understanding of it was also in vain.

If a literal, factual Bible is seen as a
collection of literal facts then any fact pulled from the text immediately becomes the foreground of proof with a background of a kind of "fantasy context" which is assumed to "support" the isolated fact. Thus, another "fact of life" for Christians is that one must be "born again" to be saved.

aikido7

</strong>

If Jesus was "the Lamb of God" does that mean that Mary had a little lamb? Seriously, there are some common-sense ways of making some distinctions here.

</strong>

A massive consensus of scholarship points out that some of what Jesus is reported to have said was actually a creation of the evangelists who wrote about him decades after his crucifixion.

</strong>

Granted, it would be keen if I could rule the world but I don't. I find fascination in following today's scholars who discuss and dialogue the importance and significance of various elements of the gospel.

</strong>

A Jesus performing supernatural miracles was definitely important to the evangelists. Contradiction on the resurrection points to a developing tradition; literalistic notions of "credibility" may suffer, but early Christian diversity among the traditions is illuminated and can be of tremendous value.

</strong>

Jesus lived and died and because he seemed noteworthy (even God-like) to his followers, they were the ones who "connected the dots" and formed the stories necessary for a theological constellation.

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: aikido7 ]</p>

James Still

Hear me O Furies as I tell the tale of the Lord and His dog? I do lurk intermittently (by the way I do not hold a PhD and am not a doctor of anything; I did attend graduate coursework in NT Studies but never worked toward a degree in it). I wish I could contribute to the forum more but I'm writing three chapters in a forthcoming book on C# and ADO.NET for a UK publisher. Not exactly glamorous stuff but it's that other side of me that pays the rent so I can take up achaeology and ancient literature as a hobby.

NOGO

I like the joke.
I wish that you share with us some these common-sense ways. It could get very interesting.

First I doubt that you can get most Christians to agree on this. Second you don't tell us what that "some" is. It would be interesting to know what you consider to be added by the writers.
Were the miracles added as well or do you consider that only the embarrassing elements were additions?

So miracles are true (not additions to the actual story) because they were important to the evangelists. The resurrection must have been inportant too yet you speak of a "developing tradition". What that means to me is that people became creative. So that you admit that some resurrection stories may have been fabricated.

Wow! I don't know if you actually believe what you said here. Jesus did say something about his mission. Mt 15:24 ... "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." This is, then, one of the dots. The saviour of the world bit and the link with the genesis "fall of mankind" is the connecting that the disciples made later. But these are in plain contradiction.

I would suggest that followers who "connected the dots" traced the lines first and put the dots in later.

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

aikido7

Jesus was not born of a woman with her hymen intact, people do not walk on the surface of water and God does not resuscitate people after they have been dead three days....

Newly-discovered texts give scholars today a better insight into the heretofore unknown forms of first-century Judaism and what terms like "resurrection" meant to the ancient mind.

Interesting constellation, NOGO. You obviously have mapped out a different configuration. I see the "dot/line" problem you raise as more a case of "both/and" rather than "either/or." The Bible, evangelical and fundamentalist lenses notwithstanding, should not be--in my opinion--seen as a wholistic piece. There are many, many authors, many audiences, many readers, many agendas and many traditions that can be imperfectly glimpsed between its lines.

I predict that there will be a focused look at the authentic letters of Paul during the next few decades; already there seems to be a lot of "scholarly sniffing" around Paul's particular theology and how it addresses the concerns of the different early Christian groups he was writing to. Though varnished and idealized, Luke's Acts contains some interesting power plays and fractional disagreements below its surface--at least according to better minds than I.

NOGO

Actually, I was hoping for some general critetia rather than specific example. How do you know that Jesus was not born of a woman with the hymen intact? Obviously nobody claims that her hymen remained intact when the baby came out. Can you get concensus on this issue among Christians?

You get a perfect score on dacing around the issues without ever answering any. I was looking for an answer on this specific issue. Jesus states his missing as for the "Children of Israel only" when he first refused to answer the foreign woman's request. Jesus makes no link between his mission and the genesis story of the fall of mankind. The epistles tell us that Jesus came because God promised us a saviour in Genesis in order to repair the great sin.

How can this be a "both/and" thing.
If Jesus' mission was to save all of humanity then he would not have said "I was sent ONLY for the lost sheep of the house of Israel".
Please note the word "ONLY". That together with the fact that the word "ONLY" appears in a sentence which explains why Jesus refused the woman's wish and you have a either/or situation.
Please exaplain how this can be a both/and situation.

Ok, you are not a fundamentalist. But what is then the conclusion. You want to remove which one of these two ideas. Jesus did not say that he came only for the "lost children of the house of Israel" or Jesus was not sent to redeem all of humanity?

The way I see it you are in a bind either way.
If you drop the "only for the lost sheep ..." affair and keep the "redeem all of humanity" then WHY, did Jesus simply never said so?

You are right that I opt for the other possibility. I believe that the idea that Jeus was the redeemer of the world and the link to the fall of mankind in Genesis is far fetched. Since Jesus never even makes a small allusion to this concept I dismiss it. What remains is that Jesus was a anointed one of God in the old testament traditional style. This exaplains the "I was sent only for the lost sheep of the House of Israel" and many other elements of the Gospels.

But this example just goes to show you how tricky it can be for anyone to simply decide which parts he takes seriously and which he doesn't.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

RyanS2

If the debate here is on apologetics, both good and bad, I see nothing wrong with them per' se. On the Christian side, both Nomad and Haran have had intelligent, well-thought things to say, and are fairly polite, (or at least as polite as one can expect about a subject as deeply personal as these). Likewise, the atheists have Turtonm, James Still, etc. Being non-Christian myself, I tend to lean towards certain explanations given, when in fact, the Christian idea may make more since. Doesn't mean I will always agree with Nomad or Haran, (I keep mispelling his name for some reason), but it does mean that I can learn some valuable things from them.